Free Image and Viewing software
 

Fastones free image and viewing software suite has been updated.
Its a fantastic set of free software for viewing all formats, Raw and Jpgs etc. I have been using this program for a couple of years now. I find it extremely useful for picking 4 photo at a time blowing them up to picking the best ones and discarding the ones you don't want to keep. http://www.faststone.org/FSViewerDetail.htm

Thanks for the info Christine, I,ve just downloaded the software and I'll give it a try as soon as it is installed.

Alan

I too downloaded the program and I've been playing with it a bit. My only criticism so far is that I would like the thumbnails and menus to stay visible and that may be possible once i've played around some more. I've been using Picasa to sort files etc but get quite frustrated with it because it often hangs up if I'm browsing and come to a RAW file.
They are several other programs on the same site. Have you used them and are they useful?

Snowyowl, when you double click on the thumbnail it opens up another window with the thumbnails at the top eg. below. As long as you don't put your curser in the main window the thumbnails stay put, just press on each photo along the top line and it will show the large photo in the main window. When you want to compare like photos to see if they are sharp. Hold down the ctrl and pick upto 4 thumbnails then press on the box in-between the rotate tool and the envelope, this will put the 4 photos on the screen, you can zoom and delete any you don't want.
The other programs are also good I use the screen capture, the photo below was done with it. You can use it for save as, email, clipboard and a couple of others.
Maxview is a simple program for viewing your photos at full size it will even read Canon Raw and I think Nikon.

The photo resizer is also a batch covert and rename tool for standard Jpeg, Tiff, Gif etc but not raw files.

Hope this helps.

I downloaded it, Saphire, and think it's very good. Many thanks for the link.

thanks for the info. I've downloaded it and like it. It is so easy and convenient to use.

Fiona

me too, looks great..thanks for the info..
Al.

Me too. Thanks Christine - I find it particularly useful when I have mixed RAW images with jpg - it opens them all. Comparing images is also very useful.

Dave

Glad you are all finding the program useful. I am still finding lots of new features in this version that makes it even better, there are lots more editing tools including simple sharpening, saturation and quite a few others, which weren't in the older version. The only drawback I see is the main viewing window, the photos look very soft. You will learn to ignore that and only discard the ones which are really bad or have no detail at all, and the usual that have camera shake. The example of the kestrel above doesn't look sharp but when edited are sharp. That is the one I posted in my gallery.

I've dumped Picasa in favour of Faststone and seem to become happier with it day by day. I haven't found any kind of text tool so still have to switch to other programs for that sort of thing but right now between using Faststone and DPP my PS7 is getting very little use.

Snowyowl, there are two text tools. In the first picture its the one with the small A next to the crop tool on the task bar. In the second picture on the main screen use your right mouse key to bring up the boxes.

Thanks, Christine. Once again you have come to my aid and your help is really appreciated.

Now that's interesting. On my screen the tool bar that you've shown in your picture is at the bottom of my screen which is probably why I missed it. T here must be an option to change the location. There appear to be more layers to this program than I expected and i'm becoming more and more impressed.

I can't seem to find anything for changing the positions Dan but I have found I can download direct from card which is useful and it will put them in a dated directory.

Christine, great big "Thank you" for the link. I just downloaded it and so far I'm in love.

Bringing this back to the top so new members can check out this great software.

Saphire you hit the bulls eye. I alway have trouble finding the old, but wanted topics in forum or gallery. Would love if anyone can give a good instruction.

I downloaded the viewer and it is very good. Definitely suggested to everyone. One feature I like best is the slide show and the ability of the software to automatically turn the vertical frame images into right up position.

I've used this quite a bit now and am even more impressed with it.
Ability to view RAW and JPEG very useful.
Quick conversion from RAW to JPEG also very handy
Resizing for posting is very easy and quick - I think that a sticky linking to FastStone would be useful as new members often ask about resizing and file sizes.
Christine, I'm so grateful for the link that I won't mug you for your 400mm lens!!

I've been using Faststone to download my pictures from the card reader. It's quick and simple. I use DPP to PP. I would do a quick run through of new shots in Faststone and delete the really bad ones then if there were any left I would swith to DPP. It would assign new sequential numbers which were out of step with the origianal file numbers. After a while when I tried to sort files into folders, it was problem because Faststone and DPP, not surprisingly, were assigning different numbers to the file so it became confusing to tie the JPEG and the RAW image together. I've switched to Zoombrowser for downloading, even though I prefer Faststone, and now the files all match.